Lists of Nobel Prizes and Laureates

Lists of Nobel Prizes and Laureates

Alfred Nobel's Final Years in Sanremo

by Lorenette Gozzo

Alfred Nobel once said, "Home is where I work and I
work everywhere." It was a running commentary on the kind
of life he had led as a result of his growing business empire.
Rootless, though, he was not. Nobel managed to "settle
down" at fixed points, from where he could oversee his
spreading concern, which spanned the European continent and
reached over to the United States.

Between the years 1865 to 1873, Alfred Nobel had his home,
laboratory and the center of his business near his
factory in Krümmel, Hamburg.
He moved into a magnificent house on Avenue Malakoff in Paris in 1873,
where he seemed to have settled permanently for almost two
decades. He would, however, spend the last five years of his
life, in a lovely villa overlooking the Mediterranean, in San
Remo, Italy.

Sanremo, a town located in the Liguria region in northwestern
Italy, has been a year-round health resort since 1861. It is located in
that part of the Italian Riviera known as the Riviera dei Fiori,
named for the flowers that are grown here and exported to
continental Europe.

The property that Alfred Nobel bought at the Riviera di Ponente
in 1891 had a large villa. The exterior carried influences from
the kind of architecture more widespread in the orient. The
Moorish-style villa was built on a large park, surrounded by an
orange grove with palm trees and flower beds. The place was formerly
owned by a Polish poet, Josephy Ignacy Kraszewsky who named it
Mio Nido, "My Nest." This new home was undoubtedly,
for Alfred Nobel, a refuge from the political storm he left
behind in France.

The move from Paris was certainly not a voluntary act. He had his
social circles in the French capital that included Victor Hugo
and he was in the midst of important experiments at his
laboratory in Sevran, located 16
kilometers northeast of Paris.

It was the successful result of one of these experiments that
would ironically banish him from his favorite Parisian home with
its library, stables and orchid house. (He kept this house until
the time of his death).

Paris Leave-taking

In 1887, Alfred Nobel introduced another of his revolutionary
inventions which he called ballistite. It was a mixture of 40
percent nitrocellulose and 60 percent nitroglycerine. Cut into
flakes, this made an excellent propellant for ammunition and
continued to be in use for over 75 years. It was superior to
black powder and was virtually smokeless.

Ballistite was a culmination of his efforts to create an
explosive for mining which would be as effective as possible.
This coincided with the race among the governments of Europe to
get hold of a powerful and less smoky military product for
artillery missiles, torpedoes, and other ammunition during the
unstable political period of the 1880s. Once the patent for his
blasting powder was made public, Alfred Nobel offered this
product to the French government. Alas, the French didn't
see any need for it since they were already in the process of
producing a near-smokeless product based on an invention by a
French chemist named Paul Vieille.

Alfred Nobel, the businessman, thereupon offered his product to
the Italian government which lost no time in accepting it. A
large factory in Avigliana, located near the city of Turin, was
fitted for the production of ballistite and a contract for the
delivery of 300 tons was signed in 1889. Soon after, the
government of Italy wanted to acquire for itself the rights to
manufacture ballistite. Nobel turned over his Italian patent for
half a million lire.

These actions did not sit well with France. An ugly press
campaign aimed at discrediting Nobel was started. Among other
things, he was unjustly accused of espionage, threatened with
imprisonment, and his license to conduct experiments in France
withdrawn.

Erik Bergengren in his book "Alfred Nobel" writes:
"The French authorities cannot be blamed for keeping a
watchful eye on a foreign citizen - however famous - who was
experimenting with war materiel within their country and selling
it to a foreign power that belonged to the Triple Alliance. But
the charges against the inventor of industrial espionage and
theft of patents, etc. were of course, utterly groundless. All
responsible people knew this, but the vilifications in the press
and the persecution continued, fed by political
motives."

A reproduction of the portrait of
Alfred Nobel's mother, one of the few personal belongings
he took with him from Paris.

Life by the Mediterranean

As a result, Nobel decided to leave France. After visiting
Robert, his brother in
Sweden and his factories at Avigliana (in Italy), Ardeer (in Scotland) and
Krümmel (in Germany) for conferences regarding various
future arrangements, he went back to Paris and took with him all
laboratory equipment which had not been confiscated and a few
personal possessions, including his mother's portrait, a
gouache by Anders Zorn and a part of his library, and moved into the
newly-furnished house in Sanremo. The move to Sanremo would be
beneficial to Alfred Nobel's person in more ways than one.
He had been suffering from chronic colds and symptoms of scurvy
for some time and the balmy, mild climate of the Mediterranean
was a welcome relief after the cold and humidity of Paris. (The
days are almost always sunny in Sanremo and the mean
temperatures range from 10 degrees Celcius in winter to 23 in
summer).

After settling down in Sanremo, Nobel had a laboratory
built close to his villa. Ragnar
Sohlman, who was first engaged as a secretary to Nobel, and
who would later be assigned as a chemist in the Sanremo
laboratory, described the laboratory in his memoirs "The
Legacy of Alfred Nobel", thus: "The laboratory
itself, a long, one-storeyed building which stood in a large park
and garden adjoining Nobel's villa consisted of three
rooms: a big machine room with a gas engine and electric
generators for different types of voltage, electric current for
lighting and numerous electrochemical experiments; an equally
large room for purely chemical tests and other experiments; and a
smaller one containing a library, weighting machines and various
instruments as well as rifles for shooting practice." Another chemist,
an Englishman named George Beckett, was employed in this private laboratory.
Alphonse Tournaud, a young Frenchman
from the laboratory in Sevran, worked as laboratory assistant and
mechanic.

Experiments in Sanremo

It was in Sanremo that the groundwork for several of Alfred
Nobel's later inventions was initiated. Although he did not
complete these works during his lifetime, they would be perfected
by others in later years.

The production of substitutes for rubber, gutta percha, and
leather from raw materials closely related to the manufacture of
explosives, had fascinated Nobel since the early years. He now
set out to pursue this search in his Sanremo laboratory. He also
developed varnishes that can be considered as precursors of the
varnishes being manufactured today.

In 1896, Nobel took out a patent for a pressure nozzle of
glass containing the extremely fine holes that were necessary for
squeezing out the nitrocellulose or cellulose solution which
solidified into silk fibers. When the factories in Krümmel,
Germany were reorganized after World War II to manufacture
"peace-time" products, one of these products was
rayon or artificial silk. Another was Vistra, also a fiber based
on low nitrated cellulose which had its early beginnings in San
Remo.

Literary Excursions

Meanwhile, experiments of a literary kind also occupied his
creative moments during the last three years of his life. One of
these was a play entitled 'The Patent Bacillus', a
parody of the cordite lawsuit he faced in England which was
another unsavory offshoot of the ballistite invention. He also
worked at the completion of 'Nemesis', a
Shelly-inspired attempt at a tragedy. The latter was published a
few weeks after his death.

The house in Sanremo which he had renamed "Villa
Nobel" (he was teased by his friend Gustav Aufschläger
that it takes two to make a nest, so he discarded the sobriquet
"Mio Nido"), had now become the center of his private
and business life. Although his business affairs would finally
come full circle when he opened his factory in Bofors, Sweden in
later years, he traveled back to Sanremo, like a pigeon to its
roosting place.

He had brought with him his stable of fine horses from France,
but he found time to take pleasant walks along the scenic
waterfront. While Nobel was socially an unobtrusive resident in
the neighborhood, his tests were not.

He had a slender jetty built into the
sea for his powder and firearms tests which were carried on at
high pressure until his death. The once-idyllic resort would be
disturbed every now and then, by test firings from the jetty. The
neighbors started to complain.

One of them, an Italian named Rossi, offered to sell an even
larger villa adjacent to Villa Nobel. Rossi pestered Nobel with
his offer, making much capital of the risks and dangers that
Nobel's laboratory posed to the life and limb of people
living nearby. The sales pitch worked, and Nobel ended up with
two large houses on his hands.

What to do with the latest acquisition? During the months of May
and June, Nobel found time to bathe in the warm waters of the
Mediterranean. He now had an idea how to put the house in good
use. "It will be an excellent place to undress in when we
take our daily dip in the sea below; that will save us from being
crowded out by Italians in the public bathing huts," he
confided to Ragnar Sohlman.

It was obviously said in pure jest, since he seemed to have had
other purposes in mind. Plans for the renovation of the villa
were made along with orders for a magnificent suite of furniture.
There was speculation that he was probably thinking of offering
the villa to King Oscar of Sweden as a residence during the
latter's spring visits to the Riviera.

It was not to be. On December 10, 1896 Alfred Nobel succumbed to
a lingering heart ailment, suffered a stroke, and died in the
villa that was once called "My Nest."

Villa Nobel Today

After his death, Villa Nobel was sold in accordance with
Alfred Nobel's last will. In the late 1960s, the property
was bought by the authorities of Sanremo and was later used for
cultural and scientific activities. Organized by the Sanremo
authorities in cooperation with the Nobel Foundation, these
gatherings were participated in by Italian and Swedish Nobel
Laureates. Villa Nobel has been honored by visits of the heads of
state of Sweden and Italy and by members of the Royal Family of
Sweden.

Villa Nobel and the adjacent laboratory are now being converted
into a museum open to the public.

Sanremo continues to maintain its ties with Nobel, long after
his death. Every 10th of December, large quantities of flowers
sent by the authorities in Sanremo (the province of Imperia, the
city of Sanremo and the Board for Tourist Promotion of the
Riviera dei fiori), adorn the annual Nobel Prize Award Ceremony
and Banquet in Stockholm.